"Do the Right Thing" is dedicated to Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Griffith, Arthur Miller, Edmund Perry, Yvonne Smallwood, and Michael Stewart, six black New Yorkers who had been killed leading up to Lee making the movie.

What is the message of Do the Right Thing?

Spike Lee concludes Do the Right Thing with two scrolling quotations accompanied by soft jazz, one from Martin Luther King, Jr. advocating peaceful protest and the other from Malcolm X advocating violence as self-defense.

Where does the phrase Do the Right Thing come from?

“Do the Right Thing” starts where Lee's 1988 film “School Daze” ends—with a call to “Wake up”—but here it comes through by way of local media and in the context of art. It begins with one of the cinematic voices of the era—with Samuel L.